A sexuality pivot: Thinking through solidarity,geographies of sexuality,and a world in transition

Abstract

While work on solidarities forms a core element within geographical scholarship, especially as related to forms of shared connection to address forms of inequality, few studies from the geographies of sexualities literature have directly engaged with the concept. This article argues that there are two complementary logics as to why scholars working on sexuality may want to consider more forcibly the concept of solidarity. One of these logics suggests that a focus on solidarities can further pre-existing key interests within the geographies of sexualities literature, especially in parts of the world that have historically received relatively limited research attention. A second logic suggests that a focus on sexuality-based solidarities can help enable sexualities scholars to further critical engagement regarding broader discourses, and offer alternative framings, regarding a world in transition. This article presents a series of examples, drawn from across sub-Saharan Africa, related to both logics together with a series of potential future directions for research. Taken collectively, this article, by drawing on earlier work on solidarity from within the discipline of geography, contends that there are a number of key benefits for sexualities scholars to undertake a ‘pivot’ or choice to explore solidarity more directly in the current moment.

Introduction

Today there exists a wide variety of work on solidarities both from within the discipline of geography and further afield. This work has explored the processes by which forms of collective action are made possible, together with how they relate to particular spaces and often across various scales (Featherstone, 2012; Gagliano, 2021; Kelliher, 2018). Interest in solidarities has been wide-ranging, including a focus on race and colonialism (Bressey, 2014; Brown and Yaffe, 2018; Hodder, 2016; Koensler, 2016; McGregor, 2017; Mott, 2015) and class and labour movements (Emery, 2018; Herod, 1995; McDowellet al., 2012; North and Cato, 2018), to name but two key areas of interest. Yet there has – with a few key exceptions – been a less concerted focus on solidarities from within the geographies of sexualities literature. This article, therefore, sets itself the task of exploring two different, yet also closely interrelated, logics as to why sexualities scholars may see the utility of greater engagement with the concept of solidarity.

The first logic relates to how a consideration of sexuality-based solidarities may directly extend existing research interests and concerns with the geographies of sexualities literature. It does so by bringing to the forefront the agentic process and connections across spaces and scales that can come to enable forms of solidarity, especially as they relate to the Global South. ¹ Drawing on examples from sub-Saharan Africa, a region with reports of instances of severe sexuality-based forms of injustice (Cheney, 2012; Currier, 2019; Pierce, 2016; Tamale, 2013), and historically limited engagement by geographers working on sexuality (Tucker, 2020), this first logic argues that a search to uncover solidarities may help scholars explore, and add to our understanding of, the local agentic abilities of communities to address or confront severe forms of sexuality-based discrimination and violence.

The second logic suggests that in addition to supporting existing research interests within the geographies of sexualities literature, a focus today on sexuality-based solidarities can also speak directly to wider debates which have emerged over the past 20 years with respect to a world in transition. As outlined below, the current historical moment of transition is marked by increasing debate about the decline in Global North geopolitical and economic power and the rise of powers elsewhere (Agnew, 2010; Cox, 2012; Harvey, 2003; Mawdsley, 2019); increasing critical engagement about the ways Global North power is wielded especially beyond the Global North (Gregory, 2004; McEwan, 2009); and concurrent concerns related to the way academic knowledge is itself generated in light of unequal North/South relationships (Barker and Pickerill, 2020; Demeter, 2020; Radcliffe, 2017). As this article argues, considering solidarities – and of importance here, sexuality-based solidarities – in relation to the current moment of transition not only offers new research avenues for geographers working on sexuality to consider, it may also enable sexuality scholars to present important alternative perspectives about the current moment itself.

When combining these two logics and drawing on earlier work within the discipline of geography on the importance of highlighting forms of solidarity during moments of geopolitical change (Kearns, 2004), this article argues that a ‘pivot’ or choice to forefront solidarity can help take forward a range of academic debates, both within sexualities scholarship and beyond. Such a pivot towards solidarity may not only further geographical scholarship on sexuality; it may also situate that work directly within wider academic debates by both critically engaging with them and offering alternative perspectives about the current moment.

This article is split into four main sections. The first section explores contemporary thinking on solidarities generally and considers how geographers working on sexuality have at times engaged (or not engaged) directly with the concept. It then considers how existing geographical work on sexualities may be extended by thinking more directly about solidarities. In particular, this section considers how a focus on solidarities may help address concerns raised by geographers working on sexuality with regard to the need to more directly appreciate local agentic processes of communities when confronting sexuality-based discrimination especially in the Global South – an interest that is also shared by existing scholarship on solidarities. The second section then briefly outlines existing wider scholarship that has come to define a world in transition. It also considers how geographers working on sexuality have implicitly at times engaged with debates that have furthered pre-existing discourses about the current moment. Yet it also suggests that, unlike during an earlier moment of transition that has distinct similarities to the current one, solidarities have not yet been considered directly in relation to it. Drawing on Kearns’ (2004) historical work on the ‘political pivot of geography’, this article outlines how a ‘pivot’ towards solidarities can offer important alternative perspectives about a moment of transition. It therefore suggests that such a pivot towards solidarities during the current moment of transition, if it includes sexuality-based solidarities, can also allow geographers working on sexuality new entry ways to intervene in broader debates about the world in transition; not simply to align with existing discourses about it, but to offer alternative perspectives of it. The third section of this article then gives three examples of sexuality-based solidarities and considers how an understanding of these existing, emergent, or potential forms of solidarities can speak to existing interests for geographers working on sexualities and, just as importantly, allow such scholars ways of offering alterative perspectives about the current moment of transition. One of these, ‘diplomatic transnational solidarities’ considers solidarities already formed. Another, ‘local solidarities and Global North imperatives’, considers emergent solidarities. And the final example, ‘researcher and sexuality-based community solidarity’, considers the potential for future solidarities. The fourth section of this article then considers potential future research areas for geographers working on sexuality to extend existing scholarship as well as new research questions that speak directly to, and critically engage with and offer alterative perspectives about, discourses regarding the current moment of transition.

Contemporary solidarity thinking and its relationship to the geographies of sexualities

As Featherstone (2012) notes, the concept of solidarity, especially within geography, has rarely been the subject of sustained theorization. This is perhaps surprising considering the very wide range of contemporary studies that deploy the concept. Drawing on Kelliher (2018), it is possible to appreciate the large body of work which has considered solidarities in terms of race and colonialism (Bressey, 2014; Brown and Yaffe, 2018; Hodder, 2016; Koensler, 2016; McGregor, 2017; Mott, 2015) as well as class and labour movements (Emery, 2018; Herod, 1995; McDowellet al., 2012; North and Cato, 2018). To this list can also be added feminist mobilisation (Bee, 2011; Cole and Luna, 2010; Dean, 1996; Kearns, 2013; Rajan and Thornhill, 2019) and also work which has critically engaged with the role of geographical scholarship in the furtherance of solidarities (Gagliano, 2021).

Taken collectively, solidarity scholarship can therefore be defined as an exploration of ‘a relation forged through political struggle which seeks to challenge forms of oppression’ (Featherstone, 2012: 5). Crucially, as Featherstone (2012) discusses in detail, it is key that scholars understand solidarities not as ‘pre-given’ or already formed, but as forms of connection, shared purpose, and mobilisation that must be actively worked for, often in the face of (and as the result of) forms of inequality and injustice. Contemporary enquiries into solidarities therefore can be as much about understanding the agentic processes of their formation as about the outcome of their actions. As a result, geographers have been especially interested in solidarities due to the ways in which they relate to and emerge in particular places and connect to various scales. While solidarities may be defined by shared experiences of oppression, marginalisation, and discrimination in particular places, they also have the potential to connect across spaces and scales to allow for wider, inventive, and new ways of configuring (geo)political relations. Equally, scholarship has highlighted the importance of appreciating the wider contexts that can hinder solidarities and the reasons for this at a variety of scales (Kelliher, 2018).

Yet while scholarship on solidarities has encompassed a range of political movements and forms of injustice, relatively less research has specifically considered sexuality as it relates to solidarity. Perhaps most explicitly, from within the geographies of sexualities canon (together with allied scholarship), has been a consideration of solidarities in empirical work on the human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) pandemic and mobilisations to access ARV treatments in the 1990s, together with more recent calls for sexuality-based solidarities around HIV/AIDS (Brown, 1997; Kearns, 2016; Martin, 2020; Tucker, 2015). Implicitly, however, a range of topics can be seen to speak instead to structural constraints, often related to forms of inequality, which may hinder solidarities. For example, homonormativity debates are in part concerned with a lack of solidarity based on power imbalances across raced, classed, and gendered subjectivities (Browne et al., 2021; Duggan, 2002; Oswin, 2007; 2008). Here pre-existing power imbalances function to benefit certain groups, such as the ‘white queer patriarch’ (Nast, 2002), to the detriment and political and economic marginalisation of, and perpetuation of inequality for, others. Equally, gender and sexuality scholarship on intersectionality has identified the challenges that can occur, and the subsequent harms that can result, when simplistic similarities and supposed solidarities (rather than differences and forms of inequality) are highlighted in academic scholarship and political action (Brown, 2012; Valentine, 2007; Tucker, 2009).

Such critical interrogation of difference and inequality has proved vital and animated a range of key scholarship on the diversity of same-sex subjectivities. Yet it could also be argued that less consideration has been given to how forms of solidarity may also be in existence or be in the process of emerging across scales, despite such forms of difference. A consideration of solidarities may therefore be important to uncover especially as they relate to sites beyond those traditionally studied by the geographies of sexualities literature, in sites in the Global South, such as the sub-Saharan Africa region. Indeed, here it is possible to suggest that looking towards solidarities in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa may speak to existing research interests and concerns of geographers working on sexuality. It is possible to appreciate this in a number of ways.

First, an exploration of existing or emerging solidarities may be especially important to examine in the context of locations in the Global South, such as parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where there exist widespread reports of discrimination and violence against individuals with same-sex desire (Berlot and Masse, 2019; Boyd, 2013; Cheney, 2012; Currier, 2019; Pierce, 2016; Tettey, 2016; Tamale, 2013) – and where there has historically been limited research attention by geographers working on sexuality (Tucker, 2020). The research that does exist has focused on the severe challenges facing same-sex communities in the region, yet far less work has considered the agentic efforts of local communities to directly, and collectively, challenge forms of injustice and inequality that draw together different groups (Tucker, 2020). Drawing on Featherstone (2012), a focus on solidarities may allow scholars to consider what work is actively already being done (or may potentially be done) via collective mobilisation to address often-times severe stigma and discrimination against same-sex communities. ² Furthermore, in the context of geographical and allied work on sexualities, a recent key concern has been that scholarship on same-sex communities in the Global South can inadvertently frame local communities which face the brunt of sexuality-based forms of injustice and inequality as needing ‘saving’ by groups in the Global North (Brown and Browne, 2016; Kollman and Waites, 2009). Looking towards solidarities and – as with existing literatures on solidarities more generally – focusing on the processes that sustain them, may be a useful mechanism to forefront local agencies.

Second, and linked to the previous point, geographers and allied scholars have also highlighted the need to critically engage with the potentially unintended consequences of the ways in which Global North actors impact those in the Global South (Doan, 2018; Tucker, 2020). Specifically, work here has considered how supposedly supportive activities of Global North actors, discourses, and policy processes may become inadvertently reconfigured when they impact local communities in the Global South, and especially in a region such as sub-Saharan Africa (Tucker, 2020). Work on solidarities may reflect on the degree to which such Global North actors, discourses, and policy processes may hinder the development of local solidarities due to, potentially, a misalignment of priorities and activities between Global North and local actors. Conversely, work on solidarities may also allow scholars to consider the possibility of generative connections and forms of solidarity across scales.

Lastly, a more concerted focus on solidarities by geographers working on sexualities should not be seen to negate the important work which has already explored issues related to inequality and difference, but can instead further such work. While work on topics such as homonormativity and intersectionality have both in differing ways focused on forms of difference and the perpetuation of inequities, it may also be possible to appreciate how solidarity work can connect to this. Afterall, a key motivator to create forms of solidarity may indeed be forms of inequality, and forms of inequality may need to be addressed in the development of solidarities. How such forms of inequality speak to solidarities – both as motivators for, and hindrances in – their formation, may also prove important areas of future research.

It is therefore possible to appreciate the potential that a focus on solidarities may bring to existing areas of research interest within the geographies of sexualities sub-discipline and especially in the context of research work on the Global South and a region such as sub-Saharan Africa in particular. Yet it is also possible to consider an additional logic as to why a focus on solidarity and especially sexuality-based solidarity may be important. Here it becomes important to consider what a focus on sexuality-based solidarities may help uncover regarding broader academic debates and discourses regarding a world in transition.

A world in transition and the importance of solidarity

Much has been written about the degree to which the world is now witnessing the declining geopolitical and economic power of the United States and Europe in recent years (Cox, 2012; Ferguson, 2021; Kanin, 2019; Kaplan, 2019; Quinn and Kitchen, 2019). Nearly two decades ago, Harvey (2003) had already signalled such a shift in relation to the United States, arguing that declining economic power at home was leading to increased militarisation overseas which itself would lead to an eventual decline of the United States as a global power. Such decline can be seen to have accelerated under the presidency of Donald Trump until the presidency of Joe Biden (Kumar, 2021; Regilme Jr., 2019). Within Europe, decline has focused on the fall out of the Great Recession (Armington and Ceka, 2014; Ikonomou, 2010) and the EU's decline in being able to uphold democratic and sexuality-based rights (Żuk and Żuk, 2020). Concurrently, debate has explored the rise of China as a geopolitical and economic power (Agnew, 2010; Christensen, 2006; Ikenberry, 2008) and the increasing impact it has had across the Global South, in terms of development aid and related political power (Gu et al., 2008; Liu and Dunford, 2016; Minghao, 2016; Mohan and Power, 2009; Wang, 2016). Work has explored the rise of South-South cooperation and specifically the role of Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa, which together with China make up the ‘BRICS’ states, calling into question the hegemony of Global North powers’ traditional role as suppliers of aid and funding support to countries in the Global South (Bergamaschiet al., 2017; Malik, 2013; Mawdsley, 2019; Modi, 2011). Sexualities scholars have at times also engaged with, aligned, and furthered these debates. For example, work on homonationalism (Puar, 2006; 2007; 2013) in the United States can be read as a queer corollary to Harvey's concerns. While for Harvey it is economic decline brought on by the contradictions inherent in capitalism within the United States that leads to military force abroad, for Puar it is in part a decline in forms of sexuality-based equality and liberation (and an active and knowing disavowal of such decline within certain US nationalist discourses) at home in the United States that forms part of an assemblage of discourses to legitimate wars in the Middle East (see also Peake, 2013).

Closely linked to work which has considered an actual decline in the power of Global North states and its implications, there also exists a range of scholarship which has critically engaged with the deployment of a variety of powerful Global North actors, discourses, and policy processes in a range of sites beyond the Global North (see for example, Gregory, 2004; McEwan, 2009; Power, 2003). Such work closely aligns with, and draw inspiration from, earlier scholarship on decoloniality and post-colonialism (Bhabha, 1994; Fanon, 1963; 1967; Said, 1978) and critiques twentieth century normative assumptions regarding the hegemonic geopolitical power of the Global North. Such concerns also, as outlined in the previous section, have been furthered by the geographies of sexualities canon and allied scholarship, with scholars heeding the call to critically engaged with the ways in which Global North actors, institutions, and policy processes impact on sites and same-sex communities across the Global South (Brown and Browne, 2016; Doan, 2018; Kollman and Waites, 2009; Tucker, 2020).

Such concerns about the deployment of Global North actors, institutions, and policy processes into sites in the Global South are themselves closely aligned with a range of geographical and allied scholarship regarding the need to be mindful of the place of the Global North within academic knowledge production, and the role of researchers based in the Global North conducting research in and on the Global South (e.g. Barker and Pickerill, 2020; Demeter, 2020; Gagliano, 2021; Kulpa and Silva, 2016; Radcliffe, 2017; Radcliffe and Radhuber, 2020). This work has drawn inspiration from wider academic debates about the emergence and importance of southern knowledges which do not take as their starting point theoretical or empirical concepts that emerge from the Global North (Bahn, 2019; Connell, 2007; 2014; Lawhorn and Truelove, 2020). Sexuality scholars have also directly aligned with and further highlighted these concerns. They have, for example, been cognisant of potential power imbalances between the Global North and Global South in terms of academic knowledge production with critical engagements regarding the globalisation of sexuality, and modernist teleological views regarding ultimate usurping of localised (re: Global South) sexual identities in the face of globalised (re: Global North) forms of identity, consumption, politics, or belonging (Binnie, 2004; Brown et al., 2010; Manalansan IV, 2015; Nast, 2002; Oswin, 2005; Tucker, 2009).

It, therefore, becomes possible to appreciate how there exists wide-ranging discourses that collectively have explored a world in transition. It also becomes possible to appreciate how work by geographers and allied scholars focused on sexuality has aligned with these broader discourses. Nevertheless, there has yet to be sustained work specifically on solidarity that engages with debates regarding a world in transition. Yet as Kearns’ (2004) historical work highlights, there exists important historical precedent within the history of geography as a discipline to consider the role of solidarity in alternative framings regarding how scholars can come to comprehend moments of global transition. As Kearns describes, this precedent can be seen to centre on a ‘political pivot’, or choice, for geography to consider the importance of solidarity (or not), and therefore to help offer alternative framings and new ways of critically engaging with a world in transition. ³ For Kearns (2004; 2009; 2010), at the end of the nineteenth century, scholars such as Peter Kropótkin and Élisée Reclus argued that solidarity between populations could become a key organising principle for geographers to frame and understand a moment of transition, regarding declining geopolitical and economic power (then of the British Empire, rather than the United States and Europe), increased critical interrogation about the use of such power, and debate about the role of geographical knowledge production in relation to such concerns. A focus on solidarity during this earlier moment of transition therefore offered alternative framings that critically engaged with discourses which focused on domination of the British over other populations (Kearns, 2009).

So too many scholars wish, today, to consider how a choice or ‘pivot’ to explore the existence, emergence, or potential of solidarities in relation to the current moment of transition may enable them to critically engage with the three themes that have come to define it. For example, while much work has considered the decline in Global North geopolitical and economic power and the rise of powers elsewhere, a focus on solidarities may allow scholars to consider instances whereby connection and shared generative interest remains between actors across North/South divides. Equally, while scholarship has highlighted the potential for regressive outcomes of Global North actors, discourses, or policy processes in the Global South, a focus on solidarities may also highlight instances whereby local solidarities can act as an effective buttress against such regressive outcomes – in effect offering alterative perspectives regarding how and why there may be a decline in Global North forms of power. Furthermore, while there exists much concern regarding the unequal nature of academic knowledge production that currently favours scholarship in the Global North, a focus on solidarities may help reconfigure such concerns to potentially enable generative outcomes across North/South divides. Such a ‘pivot’ regarding the choice to explore solidarities in relation to the current moment of transition may then equally apply to sexuality-based solidarities. Indeed, here it becomes possible to suggest that rather than geographical and allied work on sexuality aligning with pre-existing discourses regarding a world in transition, a focus on solidarities – and especially sexuality-based solidarities – may present important new ways of framing the current moment together with signalling potential new areas of research interest.

Specifically for sexuality scholars, it becomes possible to see two complementary and interrelated logics as to why a focus on sexuality-based solidarities may, at present, have significant utility. One logic suggests that a focus on solidarities may further existing research interests within the sub-discipline and also further (so far relatively limited) research on regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and the agentic abilities of local communities there to address severe sexuality-based discrimination and forms of injustice. Another logic suggests that scholars may also want to consider how an appreciation of sexuality-based solidarities and the development of new research regarding them may allow sexuality scholars to critically engage with broader discourses about the world in transition by potentially offering alternative framings of it.

Examples of existing, emergent, and potential forms of solidarity

This section considers three examples of how a focus on sexuality-based solidarities can extend existing interests within the geographies of sexualities subfield while also helping to offer alterative framings of the current moment of transition. Each of these examples focuses primarily on sub-Saharan Africa, an area as already mentioned that suffers significant sexuality-based injustices and inequalities and for which there still exists relatively limited engagement by geographers working on sexuality. The first example, ‘diplomatic transnational solidarities’, considers solidarities that have already formed. The second, ‘local solidarities and Global North imperatives’, considers solidarities which are in the process of emergence. The third, ‘researcher and sexuality-based community solidarity’, considers the potentialities of future solidarities.

Diplomatic transnational solidarities

As discussed earlier, much work by geographers working on sexualities has implicitly focused on the challenges that can hinder the development of solidarities with less attention being directly paid to the possibility of their generative outcomes to address forms of injustice and inequality, especially in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa. Scholarship has also highlighted the implicit need to consider more directly the agentic abilities of local communities to offset discourses which suggest that local communities require ‘saving’ by Global North actors. At the same time, in relation to the current moment of transition both more broadly and in relation to work on sexualities, scholarship has highlighted the need to be cognisant of the regressive outcomes of Global North actors, institutions, and policy processes as they impact on the Global South and the need to keep Global North powers in check. Left to fully consider in the current moment is the potential for already existing generative solidarities – and specifically sexuality-based solidarities – that connect across Global North and Global South actors and which may help highlight local forms of agency. An appreciation of such solidarities can then be set alongside, and critically interrogate, existing concerns both about the supposed decline in Global North geopolitical power and about the role of Global North actors, institutions, and policy processes in the Global South.

To begin to appreciate this, we can consider how a 2015 article in The New York Times titled, ‘U.S. support for gay rights in Africa may have done more harm than good’ (Onishi, 2015), both aligns with existing scholarship about the world in transition and how it was received by local LGBTQ activists in Africa. The New York Times article outlined how the United States, during President Obama's administration, had in 2011 embarked on an ambitious project to ‘expand civil rights for gay people overseas by marshalling its diplomats, directing its foreign aid and deploying President Obama to speak before hostile audiences’. The article then highlights a series of examples from Nigeria whereby the activities of the United States were seen to have led to an increase in homophobic stigma and discrimination. The argument is also made that the Obama administration's attempts to address homophobic stigma and discrimination in Africa were in part a corollary and counter to American Christian fundamentalists’ attempts to influence African politics. In this sense, Africa found itself at the brunt of two competing ideological positions that emerged from the United States, one from the political and religious right, and one from the (relatively) left and liberal policies of the Obama administration. ⁴ As the article describes:

[t]he United States’ role comes as longstanding foes in its culture wars continue to move their fight to Africa. Many private supporters of equal rights for gay people in the United States, after landmark successes at home, are increasing their funding of gay causes abroad, especially in Africa. American conservative and Christian groups have also turned to Africa, where the vast majority of people still share their opposition to same-sex relations and marriage (Onishi, 2015).

Clear parallels can be seen here to existing scholarship outlined above which has highlighted problematic activities undertaken by Global North actors, such as the US government, both generally and in relation to sexuality-based rights overseas. Equally, The New York Times article could be seen to highlight another way in which the United States, to follow work on homonationalism, legitimates detrimental interventions overseas – not in this instance through military power but through diplomacy and foreign aid. Taken together, there exists a range of scholarship which can be seen to directly speak to and potentially support the position taken by The New York Times on the problematic deployment of Global North power and its impacts in the Global South.

Yet The New York Times article is perhaps today more widely known within African sexualities advocacy arenas for the significant and wide-ranging backlash it received from African LGBT advocates. As Frank Mugisha, the Executive Director at Sexual Minorities Uganda, headquartered in Kampala, wrote in The New York Times in direct response to their article:

[t]he underlying narrative of this article about anti-gay sentiment in Nigeria is that L.G.B.T.I. Africans are pawns of Western interests. While Uganda is not Nigeria, I have found quite the opposite to be true in my country. The United States government by and large follows our lead before taking action on our behalf (Mugisha, 2015, emphasis in original).

And as Paul Semugoma, the Ugandan physician and public health advocate, described:

[a]s our country-people debated putting us to death for the grave crimes of ‘aggravated homosexuality’, we embraced the help of foreigners who were like us, who could understand the horror of being the subject of moral murder and disdain. Yes, we were lucky. At the same time there had been a sea change in the US – a traditionally ardent supplier of missionaries. With Obama as president, the LGBTQI movement was flexing political muscle. And we took advantage of it. Even in Europe (Semugoma, 2016).

Here, rather than framing the Obama administration's activities as another iteration of a Global North geopolitical power intervening adversely in the Global South, African sexuality-rights advocates highlighted the shared connections and indeed solidarities between the United States and African interests. In relation to existing interests within the geographies of sexualities literature, such reading helps highlight the important agentic abilities of local activists, especially when as outlined here local activists take the lead when working with the US government. In relation to the discourses regarding the current moment of transition (including interests highlighted by geographers working on sexuality), such a reading also suggests the importance of considering the very real possibility of generative, rather than simply regressive, outcomes of interactions across North/South divides. Further, specifically in relation to current discourses on the current moment of transition that have focused on the declining power of Global North actors, this example suggests the potential continued importance of US (diplomatic) power in parts of sub-Saharan Africa in relation to sexuality.

Local solidarities and global north imperatives

Not negating the possibility for generative solidarities just discussed, it is also important to consider how, along a different but still related trajectory, local communities may potentially be adversely affected by Global North imperatives. However, rather than simply align and further existing discourses about a world in transition (and also concerns raised by geographers working on sexuality) regarding the need to critically engage with Global North actors, discourses, and policy processes as they endeavour to support local communities, it may also be possible to consider how an appreciation of emergent solidarities may lead to different outcomes and alterative perspectives. Specifically, scholarship may want to consider how, even if there is misalignment between local communities and Global North imperatives in attempts to support same-sex communities in a region such as sub-Saharan Africa, local emergent solidarities can act as an effective check on Global North imperatives. Specifically for geographers working on sexuality, this presents another way of appreciating the agentic abilities of local groups. In relation to existing discourses on a world in transition, this allows both for alternative readings regarding the adverse impacts of Global North imperatives in the Global South and also suggests an alternative way of considering how there may be a decline in Global North forms of power.

As an example, work from South Africa among former township epidemiologically-defined ‘men who have sex with men’ (MSM) has directly highlighted forms of solidarities in marginalised urban spaces which are now calling into question the power and agency of Global North actors to undertake endeavours in sites in the Global South. To appreciate this, it is first important to consider the sheer scale of effort by the US government to combat HIV across the Global South. Via the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), it is estimated that the US government has spent $85 billion on HIV programming since 2003 (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2020). Currently, PEPFAR operates in 43 countries across the Global South (US Department of State, 2021), which, prior to COVID-19, was the largest single health intervention in history undertaken by one country (Avert, 2020).

A significant proportion of PEPFAR funds has been targeted at various ‘Key Populations’ (KPs) who are seen to be at increased risk of HIV transmission and infection, of which MSM are one. In 2019 alone, PEPFAR indicated in its annual report to the US Congress that it had allocated over US$360 million to KPs (PEPFAR, 2019). One of the key sites to receive PEPFAR funds for HIV prevention, treatment, and care among MSM is South Africa, due to it having the highest HIV burden in the world (Satoh and Boyer, 2019). While nascent HIV work among same-sex communities has been ongoing in South Africa since the 1980s during the apartheid era (Gevisser, 1995), the scale and scope of activities increased dramatically in the mid-2000s due to an acknowledgement by the South African government of the need to address HIV among MSM (SANAC, 2006) and directed PEPFAR funding targeted at MSM (amfAR, 2010). In South Africa, the first large-scale, community-based HIV prevention programmes targeted at township MSM were started in 2010 in Cape Town by a local PEPFAR-funded NGO (Motswagae, 2013), and the townships of Cape Town have remained a key site where MSM HIV programming has continually been refined (Tucker et al., 2015; Hassan and Tucker, 2021). Due to subsequent shifts in PEPFAR and USAID mandates, lessons learned in South African townships have also been deployed across a range of other PEPFAR country sites across Africa and the Caribbean that subsequently developed MSM targeted programming. ⁵

Recent work has now revisited the Cape Town townships to explore the impacts of over a decade of externally funded HIV programming work for township MSM (Hassan and Tucker, 2021). This work has shown that earlier NGO concerns related to a lack of bonding social capital and solidarity among MSM (factors which were understood to accentuate sexual risk-taking behaviour (Tucker et al., 2013)) have now decreased to the point that MSM are actively strategising and engaging with each other to address their health and other needs independently of NGOs. Indeed, MSM are now strategising to address wider needs, beyond health, such as needs related to employment skills training – endeavours which are beyond the remit (and funding) of health-focused NGOs. Further, MSM are not only mobilising independently of NGOs, they are also acutely aware of the conditions that come with NGO funding. For example, at strategic moments MSM wish also to include lesbians and other women who have sex with women within their social networking and solidarity-building activities (Hassan and Tucker, 2021). Here solidarity between MSM and lesbians, and other women who have sex with women, is driven by a shared understanding and experience of sexuality-based discrimination and economic marginalisation. Yet PEPFAR-funded local NGOs struggle to financially support the attendance of lesbians and other women who have sex with women in these social networking and solidarity-building events as PEPFAR does not consider these groups as a ‘key population’ in need of HIV services (Tucker, 2020).

The implications that this has for PEPFAR are potentially very significant. This is because of the data-driven metrics that the US government uses to measure the effectiveness of PEPFAR (Lyerla et al., 2012; PEPFAR, 2020; Tucker, 2022). With very significant amounts of US taxpayer money going to support HIV programming in the Global South, it is perhaps understandable that PEPFAR today is overtly quantitatively data-driven in terms of its monitoring and evaluation of its programmatic interventions. Yet the ‘push for numbers’ which has occurred within PEPFAR (e.g. the number of MSM who test for HIV or are initiated on ARV treatment) as the key metric to evaluate programmatic success may also run counter to the specific needs of MSM and other marginalised sexualities. Put directly, PEPFAR-funded NGOs may increasingly find that they are unable to rely on MSM and wider sexual minority networks to achieve their data targets as needs and interests start to diverge. Indeed, as MSM have increasingly collectively mobilised, and indications are that their reliance on NGOs has started to decrease, the ability of PEPFAR local NGO implementing partners to achieve their quantitative targets may become more problematic (Hassan and Tucker, 2021; Tucker, 2022).

This example highlights another way of appreciating the agentic abilities of local communities as they increasingly self-organise to address their own needs and build forms of solidarity in the face of persistent sexuality-based discrimination. Regarding other pre-existing interests within the geographies of sexualities literature on intersectionality and forms of difference, the emergence of solidarities between MSM, and between MSM and lesbians and other women who have sex with women, also highlights an instance where sexed and gendered differences appear to have been (at least temporarily) set aside in the face of persistent sexuality-based discrimination and violence, which affect both men and women with same-sex desire. In relation to existing discourses regarding the current moment of transition, the emergence of these solidarities also offers an alternative reading of potentially regressive outcomes of Global North actors, discourses, and policy processes as they impact sites in the Global South. The very solidarity that is emerging between diverse individuals with same-sex desire in Cape Town's former townships may have the potential to act as a buttress against the potential negative effects of misalignment between PEPFAR's mandate (which only focuses on men in relation to health) and what local communities – via new forms of solidarity – want and may be able to achieve. Furthermore, this situation presents an alternative framing of discourses which have focused on the limitations and declining power of Global North institution (in this case PEPFAR). Rather than decline being framed often in relation to the rise of other power blocs such as China and the ‘BRICS’ states, it becomes possible to see here how the power of a Global North actor may be declining because of local emergent sexuality-based solidarities.

Researcher and sexuality-based community solidarity

As outlined above, both geographers working on sexualities and broader scholarship have considered the need to be mindful of the place of the Global North in knowledge production, and the role of researchers based in the Global North conducting research in and on the Global South. At the same time, geographers working on sexuality have especially highlighted the persistent imbalance in scholarship, with the majority of studies on sexualities still emanating from metropolitan centres of relative privilege in the Global North.

Yet while being cognisant of work which has highlighted the unequal nature and power of knowledge production (that currently favours Global North institutions) and which has also led for a call for southern knowledges (Banerjea et al., 2016; Barker and Pickerill, 2020; Gagliano, 2021; Kulpa and Silva, 2016; Radcliffe and Radhuber, 2020), scholarship may also want to think more directly about how forms of solidarity can in the future be generated between researchers (who may be located in the Global North) and populations in the Global South. As Brown et al. (2010) describes in their seminal work on sexualities research on the Global South, there remains a key concern regarding ‘whose interests are served by … uneven productions and exchanges of knowledge’ (1574). Such concerns therefore may allow scholars to consider another way in which (in this case, academic) Global North power can potentially impact regressively on the Global South. Yet such concerns also allow scholars to consider what may be done to address such outcomes in the future by thinking through the potential importance of new forms of solidarities between sexuality researchers and communities.

As Gagliano (2021) describes, an increasingly used tactic by geographers is to promote or forefront the idea of solidarity between researcher and research subjects in order to break down power imbalances between those conducting research and those being researched as well as to address the specific needs of those being researched. Such forms of solidarity can then be operationalised and have the potential to offset the unequal nature of Global North/Global South academic knowledge production through participatory action research and knowledge co-production whereby the aims of research are in part shaped by research participants (Pratt, 2010; Tucker et al., 2015) and by diversifying dissemination tactics to extend beyond academic publications (Lancione, 2017; Phillips et al., 2021). While Gagliano (2021) also cautions against relying solely on solidarity to offset power imbalances in knowledge production, it may be important to appreciate how, specifically in relation to sexualities research in the Global South, a potential move towards solidarities between researcher and research participant may still have utility. ⁶

Here scholars can consider how, as Pieterse (2015) highlights, in addition to concerns regarding unequal Global North/Global South relationships, another fundamental reason to deploy more collaborative and inductive forms of knowledge co-production is the nature of the crisis facing the Global South (and for Pieterse, specifically the urban South). For Pieterse (2015), a moment of perpetual crisis in relation to urbanisation in the South cannot and will not be solved solely by the traditional ‘accretive’ model of academic knowledge production that dominates Global North academic departments. For Parnell and Pieterse (2015), the severity of the knowledge gaps that exist in the urban South, and the urgency with which they need to be filled, requires methods of academic engagement which acknowledge the possibility of pre-existing mismatches between the needs of research subjects, policy-makers, and academics, and highlights the need for approaches which forefront knowledge co-production and participatory action research.

In relation to the study of sexualities in the Global South, scholars may also want to frame the existence of a form of urgency, or ‘crisis’, as being a potential additional reason why forms of solidarity between research subject and researcher may be necessary. There are three ways to understand this. First, and as outlined earlier, despite the activities of a range of local activists and Global North actors, institutions, and policy processes, the range of literature about and examples of sexuality-based discrimination and violence across various sites in the Global South, and especially in a region such as sub-Saharan Africa, speak towards what scholars may want to frame as a moment of perpetual crisis. Second, as Doan (2018) describes (and as the previous section on local solidarities and Global North imperatives also outlined), there can remain a significant lack of understanding among Global North actors (and especially funders) regarding the specific material, logistical, and practical needs of same-sex communities and community groups in the Global South. Research work that is directly supportive of the needs of local same-sex communities is not only severely lacking but also essential. Third, if scholars acknowledge the existence of a current moment of transition, then they may also want to recognise the potential for radical transformations in the ways in which sexuality-based advocacy and other forms of support may be operationalised going forward. In the next section, I consider how these radical transformations will require future research, together with other potential future research directions that circulated around the concept of solidarity as it relates to sexuality in the current moment of transition.

Directions for future research

As discussed in the previous sections, there exists a range of ways in which scholars can examine the benefit of considering solidarities to complement and extend existing debates within the geographies of sexualities literature. In this section, I consider how there is also a range of future research questions related to solidarity that in differing ways speak both to existing research interests in the geographies of sexualities and to broader debates about a world in transition.

In relation to extending existing interests within the geographies of sexualities literature, consideration of diplomatic transnational solidarities and the relationships between local solidarities and Global North imperatives can both be leveraged to support existing and emerging interests and concerns within the subfield. Most directly, an exploration of these different forms of solidarity can provide a useful way of engaging with a region that has not received much-sustained research attention, yet which suffers significant forms of sexuality-based injustice and inequality. In particular, with both diplomatic transnational solidarities and with local solidarities in relation to Global North imperatives, scholarship can engage with the region by considering the various ways in which the agency of local communities themselves remains key in the development of solidarities to address various forms of inequality, together with an appreciation of the various challenges that need to be overcome by local communities to maintain solidarities.

For diplomatic transnational solidarities that span across sites in the Global North and the Global South, scholars may consider these issues in relation both to the work that is needed to sustain such solidarities and potential place-specific challenges that may hinder them. The New York Times article discussed in the previous section, for example, focused on experiences from Nigeria, whereas responses to the article came primarily from Uganda (see also responses from Kivumbi, 2015; Malinowski, 2015). While Uganda's stance on homosexuality has received much attention (Boyd, 2013; Cheney, 2012; Sadgrove et al., 2012; Ward, 2015; Tucker, 2020), relatively less work has so far been conducted on other states with severely detrimental views of same-sex sexuality. Scholarship here could consider the potential geographical variations in US involvement with local activists, taking forward existing work which has implicitly considered the challenges that can hinder the development of solidarities (tied, for example, to various forms of inequality between Global North and Global South partners) while also being open to considering the very real possibility of generative diplomatic transnational solidarities across the region.

With regard to local solidarities and Global North imperatives, scholarship can also consider the work that is needed to sustain solidarities in the face of a potential mismatch between local communities and Global North funder mandates. Furthermore, the emergence of local solidarities that include diverse same-sex groups can further contribute to existing scholarship on intersectionality and forms of difference, which have implicitly focused on the reasons for a lack of solidarity between different groups. An exploration of solidarities between MSM and lesbians, and other women who have sex with women, in places such as the former townships of Cape Town may enable scholars to consider how, to what degree, and why pre-existing sexed or gendered forms of difference may be (temporarily) set aside in the face of broader, widespread, and persistent forms of sexuality-based injustice and inequality. Furthermore, while Cape Town was an early site for the development of HIV programming targeted at MSM, as outlined above, such work was then translated to a range of sites across Africa and the Caribbean. Future scholarship may wish to consider if and how the outcomes related to Cape Town with regard to the emergence of local solidarities may also be occurring elsewhere. Here scholarship could consider a range of place-specific factors that may hinder or enable the development of local emergent solidarities.

Appreciating such forms of sexuality-based solidarity, and the work that is needed to maintain them despite a range of possible challenges, may then also allow geographers working on sexuality to consider other research questions, which in turn may offer alternative perspectives on the current moment of transition. Specifically, in relation to diplomatic transnational solidarities, their very existence and generative outcomes may challenge views regarding a decline in Global North power. Future scholarship may therefore wish to consider how Global North powers, such as the United States, may maintain significant diplomatic leverage in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa with regard to sexuality. Yet, at the same time, scholars will need to be mindful of more recent geopolitical shifts. Scholarship has yet to fully consider, for example, to what degree sexuality-based diplomatic advocacy on the African continent has been directly affected by developments such as the Trump Presidency or recent challenges faced by the EU. In terms specifically of the United States, while the Trump Presidency was viewed by many scholars as a key moment of decline in the power of the United States on the world stage, the impact it has directly had on sexuality rights advocates has yet to be fully explored. Such work, however, may both add to existing discourses about a decline in Global North power, or highlight other instances where such (diplomatic) power may remain.

Additionally, as outlined earlier, the rise of South-South cooperation has dramatically accelerated over the past decade, and what this means for diplomatic transnational solidarities has yet to be considered. The formulation of new Southern power blocs, such as BRICS (made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) discussed earlier, has been explicitly designed to reduce the dependence such states have on Global North powers and funding. The impact of such new power blocs has yet to be considered in terms of sexuality or diplomatic transnational sexuality-based solidarities. While often held up as an example of the declining geopolitical and economic power of the United States and Europe, BRICS in particular may prove important to consider in terms of sexuality. This is because it includes states (such as Russia and China) with severely regressive stances on human rights and sexuality-based rights (Buyantueva, 2018; Clarke, 2010; Davis, 2008), while also including South Africa, which has enshrined the protection of sexuality-based rights within its constitution (de Vos, 2007). Considering the ways in which sexuality-based advocacy groups may or may not be able to form diplomatic solidarities with new power blocs such as BRICS, therefore, can add both to existing work on the supposed decline of Global North powers and also situate the activities of Global North powers in a wider context that includes South-South cooperation.

Further research questions related to emergent local solidarities and Global North imperatives also have the potential to offer alterative framings of the current moment of transition. Taking a lead from the consequences of PEPFAR-funded HIV programming in the former Cape Town townships, scholars may want to look at other instances where Global North imperatives and funding may misalign with local needs and the implications of such potential misalignment. ⁷ Such work could then be seen to speak back to existing concerns regarding the current moment of transition, specifically the need to be critical of Global North actors, discourses, or policy processes as they impact on local communities in the Global South. However, crucially, consideration of local solidarities can also help scholars appreciate the ways in which local communities may be able to buttress themselves from potential misalignment between local community needs and Global North imperatives. Such a situation may again highlight the importance of appreciating local agencies, while also offering an alternative perspective on the decline of Global North power. Indeed, here future scholarship might suggest that in certain instances it is not simply a situation of declining Global North geopolitical and economic power in the face of rising geopolitical and economic power elsewhere which forms a way in which to understand the current moment of transition. Instead, it may be that local communities themselves, via the development of endogenous solidarities, are also calling into question the power of Global North actors, such as international funders. Scholarship therefore may wish to consider how such a situation offers an alternative take on how to come to understand the current moment of transition.

All such research endeavours, however, may need to take seriously the potential importance of researcher and sexuality-based community solidarity. Both for sexuality scholars specifically, and for wider scholarship on the current moment of transition, a consideration of solidarity between researchers and communities offers a wide array of ways in which to approach the actual creation of new research in ways that speak directly to the specific needs of participants during the current moment of transition. Such solidarity may therefore offer an alternative to existing concerns regarding the role of researchers based in Global North institutions conducting research among local communities in the Global South and also the imbalance in scholarship whereby studies on sexualities remain largely focused on sites in the Global North. Of course, the exact form of such research, and the specifics of local needs and constraints, cannot be defined in advance of close engagement with affected communities. Yet an acknowledgement of the urgency of such research endeavours can lead scholars to consider how a certain degree of instrumentality and solidarity with research participants may be required from academic researchers working on sexualities in the Global South. Scholars from both Global North and Global South working on sexuality may wish at key moments to frame more forcibly and instrumentally their own research agendas as being driven by the specific material, logistical, and practical needs of same-sex community groups in environments in the Global South with limited available research and data and with significant sexuality-based challenges.

Conclusion: The proposition of a sexuality pivot towards solidarity

As Kearns (2004) argues regarding an earlier moment of a world in transition, there may be key benefits in considering the importance of solidarity to offer alterative framings of what such a moment means, and therefore to critically engage with existing scholarship and thinking about it. For Kearns, a ‘pivot’ or choice towards engagement with solidarity during a prior moment of world transition led scholars to consider alternative ways of knowing.

Today, in relation to sexuality, scholars may wish to consider and extend Kearns’ argument regarding a ‘pivot’ or choice to explore solidarity in the current moment by considering two interrelated logics. One of these logics, which directly aligns with and furthers Kearns’ historical argument, is to suggest for sexualities scholars new ways to critically engage with and critically interrogate pre-existing discourses about the current moment. Yet equally for sexualities scholars, it is possible to see how a complementary logic, namely to consider solidarities in relation to pre-existing interests within the geographies of sexualities canon, may also enrich and take forward those interests in new directions. Exploring solidarities more directly today therefore can add substantively to debates within the geographies of sexualities literature. Concurrently, an exploration of sexuality-based solidarities can also add substantively to broader debates about a world in transition.